The End of Christian America

[American Patriot]

A secret Muslim? Muslims do that thing precisely, the stomp on the flag, effigies of US Presidents and other things related to the US.

[Ryan Ruck]

Hey, let's do that with a picture of Mohammed!

[Avvakum]

For all of those here who celebrate Easter this day (as opposed to the Julian Calender reckoning), Happy Easter, Christ is Risen! All else is commentary.

[Phil Fiord]

Happy Easter! I chose to wish this upon several hundred people in six hours today.

[Ryan Ruck]

Yes, hope everyone had a Happy Easter!



I neglected to post a thread in the Announcement area, my apologies. If I am so neglectful in the future, don't anyone hesitate to take up the slack!

[American Patriot]

Google creates controversy with Cesar Chavez doodle

Published April 01, 2013
FoxNews.com

• 
  March 31, 2013: Cesar Chavez's 86th birthday
  
  
• 
  April 23, 2000: Happy Easter
  

Next Slide Previous Slide

Google’s decision to mark Easter Sunday with a doodle of leftist icon Cesar Chavez atop its search engine angered some users in what they see as a snub of Jesus on the day Christians mark his resurrection.


Google defended the decision by saying it reserves the spot for historical figures and events, but a review of its past doodles shows it has never honored Jesus on Christmas or Easter, despite his historical and spiritual significance to billions around the world.


“I thought the Chavez-google thing was a hoax or an early April Fool's Day prank,” Fox News contributor Dana Perino tweeted. “ ... are they just going to leave that up there all day?”


The Daily Caller website also chimed in, noting the establishing ties between Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt and the Obama administration.


“While Google frequently decorates its logo to celebrate various holidays and special events, it is unclear why the company chose specifically to honor Chavez’s birthday, instead of Easter Sunday,” the website read.


In 2011, President Obama proclaimed each March 31 to be designated Cesar Chavez Day in honor of the co-founder of the United Farm Workers union. The civil rights activist died in 1993 at age 66.


“Through boycotts and fasts, he led others on a path of nonviolence conceived in careful study of the teachings of St. Francis of Assisi and Mahatma Gandhi, and in the powerful example of Martin Luther King, Jr.,” the presidential proclamation said of the Arizona-born civil-rights leader.


Glenn Beck also noted the perceived slight in a message that retweeted at least 360-plus times.


“Cool for Google to not celebrate Easter but really?!!? Go to http://google.com,” Beck wrote. “HAPPY Caesar Chavez day everybody!”


Microsoft’s Bing, in contrast, featured brightly-colored Easter eggs on its main search page on Sunday. But Google, which last illustrated an Easter doodle in 2000, downplayed the controversy.


“We enjoy celebrating holidays at Google but, as you may imagine, it's difficult for us to choose which events to highlight on our site,” a Google spokesperson told the Washington Post on Sunday. “Sometimes for a given date, we feature an historical event or influential figure that we haven't in the past.”


The California-based Mexican Heritage Festival, however, praised the selection.


“Bravo Google for honoring Cesar, a man of faith and peace on this Easter Sunday,” the organization tweeted.


Others, meanwhile, took the opportunity to poke fun at the sometimes-surprising way Google alters its logo on its ubiquitous search engine.


“Google's Cesar Chavez doodle controversy: Much adoodle about nothing?” Karen Lopez asked.


Google has created more than 1,000 doodles since 1998, when the concept was born when company founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin altered the logo to indicate their attendance at the Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert.


“Doodles are the fun, surprising, and sometimes spontaneous changes that are made to the Google logo to celebrate holidays, anniversaries, and the lives of famous artists, pioneers, and scientists,” a Google website reads.


The ideas for the doodles come from several sources, including Google users.


“The doodle selection process aims to celebrate interesting events and anniversaries that reflect Google's personality and love for innovation,” the website continues.


A search of Google's past doodles for phrases like "Jesus" produced zero results.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/04/...#ixzz2PDkOqLBo

[vector7]

Pentagon: Religious Proselytizing is Not Permitted

Posted in Top Stories | 0 comments

Apr 30, 2013
By Todd Starnes

Religious liberty groups have grave concerns after they learned the Pentagon is vetting its guide on religious tolerance with a group that compared Christian evangelism to “rape” and advocated that military personnel who proselytize should be court martialed.

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation is calling on the Air Force to enforce a regulation that they believe calls for the court martial of any service member caught proselytizing.

President Mikey Weinstein and others from his organization met privately with Pentagon officials on April 23. He said U.S. troops who proselytize are guilty of sedition and treason and should be punished – by the hundreds if necessary – to stave off what he called a “tidal wave of fundamentalists.”

“Someone needs to be punished for this,” Weinstein told Fox News. “Until the Air Force or Army or Navy or Marine Corps punishes a member of the military for unconstitutional religious proselytizing and oppression, we will never have the ability to stop this horrible, horrendous, dehumanizing behavior.”



Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, told Fox News he was stunned that the Pentagon would be taking counsel and advice from the Military Religious Freedom Foundation.

“Why would military leadership be meeting with one of the most rabid atheists in America to discuss religious freedom in the military,” Perkins said. “That’s like consulting with China on how to improve human rights.”

The FRC has launched a petition drive urging Defense Sec. Chuck Hagel to protect the religious freedom of troops “and not to proceed with the purge of religion within the ranks called for by anti-Christian activists.”
Pentagon officials met with Weinstein and his group were to discuss a policy called “Air Force Culture, Air Force Standards,” published on Aug. 7, 2012.

Section 2.11 requires “government neutrality regarding religion.”

“Leaders at all levels must balance constitutional protections for an individual’s free exercise of religion or other personal beliefs and the constitutional prohibition against governmental establishment of religion,” the regulation states.

Military leaders were admonished not to use their position to “promote their personal religious beliefs to their subordinates or to extend preferential treatment for any religion.”

Weinstein said it’s time for the Air Force to enforce the regulation – with zeal.

“If a member of the military is proselytizing in a manner that violates the law, well then of course they can be prosecuted,” he said. “We would love to see hundreds of prosecutions to stop this outrage of fundamentalist religious persecution.”

He compared the act of proselytizing to rape.

“It is a version of being spiritually raped and you are being spiritually raped by fundamentalist Christian religious predators,” he told Fox News.

He said there is a time and a place for those in uniform to share their faith – but he took issues with fundamentalism that he says is causing widespread problems in the military.

“When those people are in uniform and they believe there is no time, place or manner in which they can be restricted from proselytizing, they are creating tyranny, oppression, degradation, humiliation and horrible, horrible pain upon members of the military,” he said.

Perkins said the military regulations have “Weinstein’s fingerprints all over it.”

“It threatens to treat service members caught witnessing as enemies of the state,” he said, referring to a Washington Post article highlighting Weinstein’s meeting with Pentagon officials. “Non-compliance, the Pentagon suggests, even from ordained chaplains could result in court-martialing on a case-by-case basis.”

The Pentagon confirmed to Fox News that Christian evangelism is against regulations.

“Religious proselytization is not permitted within the Department of Defense, LCDR Nate Christensen said in a written statement. He declined to say if any chaplains or service members had been prosecuted for such an offense.

“Court martials and non-judicial punishments are decided on a case-by-case basis and it would be inappropriate to speculate on the outcome in specific cases,” he said.

Ron Crews, the executive director of the Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty, warns that the Air Force policy would “significantly impact the religious liberties of Air Force personnel.”

“Saying that a service member cannot speak of his faith is like telling a service member he cannot talk about his spouse or children,” Crews said. “I do not think the Air Force wants to ban personnel from protected religious speech, and I certainly hope that it is willing to listen to the numerous individuals and groups who protect military religious liberty without demonizing service members.”

In an interview with the Washington Post, Weinstein called proselytizing a “national security threat.”

“And what the Pentagon needs to understand is that it is sedition and treason,” he told the newspaper. “It should be punished.”

Perkins said it was troubling the Obama Administration would place so much trust in someone like Weinstein.


“Unfortunately, it appears our military is on a forced march away from the very freedoms they are sworn to protect,” he said. “This language from Weinstein that Christians who share their faith or offer comfort to others from their faith in Jesus Christ is “sedition and treason” is a treasonous statement in and of itself.”

But Weinstein said they count thousands of Protestants among their ranks – and said they are simply going after fundamentalists.

“As soon as we find a fundamentalist Muslim, atheist, Jewish person or anybody else, we will be happy to fight them – but so far they have been few and far between,” he said.

Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Jerry Boykin, an executive vice president with the Family Research Council, told Fox News that he’s deeply concerned by what he call a pattern of attacks on Christianity within the military.

“Mickey Weinstein has a very visceral hated of Christianity and those who are Christians,” he said. “He’d like to see it eliminated from the military entirely.”

If the Air Force policy is implemented, Boykin said Christians who speak of their faith “could now be prosecuted as enemies of the state.”

“This has the potential to destroy military recruiting across the services as Americans realize that their faith will be suppressed by joining the military,” Boykin said.

In the meantime, Weinstein and his group said they will continue to push for the Pentagon to fully implement its ban on proselytizing.

“There is a time, place and manner in which proselytizing is not only allowed, but it’s something we support among our Christian clients,” Weinstein said. “However, you can’t scream fire in a crowded theater and you can’t scream Jesus in a crowded theater at certain times, places, and in certain manners.”

Sarah Palin and Mark Levin say you need to get Todd’s new book – “Dispatches From Bitter America.” Click here to get your copy!

Related posts:

1. Pentagon Grilled About Christians in Military
2. Congressman: There is a War on Religious Belief in Military
3. Pentagon Blocks, Says it Will Free Access to Southern Baptist Website
4. Pentagon Blocks Access to Southern Baptist Website
5. Air Force Academy Backs Away from Christmas Charity

[Ryan Ruck]

Don't worry.

Just put "Soldier of Allah" on your business cards and you can make Major!

[American Patriot]

You know Ryan, one day our snarky and snide comments will be reason enough to arrest us in this country....

[MinutemanCO]

May already be...

[American Patriot]

You think so? I don't know. I can go back and find all this bullshit they said about Bush... calling for him to die and all sorts of things. No one was ever arrested for that....

[MinutemanCO]

The vitriol directed at Bush came from the left and the ultra-liberal camps. My sense is that they get a free pass, just like the New Black Panther scumbags with voter intimidation. There's a storm forming and it's going to hit hard in the form of major oppression. It has already started in a more subtle fashion and will ramp up toward pretty major Nazi-esque patterns. I hope to God I'm wrong, but I don't think so. It's predicted in the Biblical texts and the Bible has a pretty darn good record of reliability.

[vector7]

MoveOn.org Demands ESPN Suspend Analyst Over His Christian Views On Homosexuality…

The so-called “progressive” left is about as intolerant of opposing views as it gets.


Via MoveOn.org

[vector7]

Was Tim Tebow Fired Because He’s a Christian?


by John Galt
May 2, 2013 05:30 EDT


Tim Tebow, welcome to the world of Christian persecution. No, not like the administration ignoring rape and murder of Christians in the Arab Spring nations, nor that of those being evicted from millennial old homelands in Egypt, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. This is the continuation of the American persecution led by the elitist citizenry who want to force feed grown adults arugula and broccoli and teach their children how to call the Department of Homeland Security on their parents for offering financial support to those heathens in Ye Olde Tea Party or Boy Scouts of America.


What Americans need to understand is that if Mr. Tebow had publicly renounced his faith, become an environmentalist activist, possibly com out of the closet and said he was a homosexual, and had seen the light to become a Muslim, the New York Jets could not have fired him. The firestorm of Islamic activist groups which would attack the team and the NFL would be so massive that in fact pressure would have been applied to force the coach to give him a fair shot to become the starter. Thus the onus for the termination clearly lies with Tim for failing to understand that talent no longer matters in this world, political correctness and an alignment with the correct perceived minority does.


The big story this week was not the firing of Tim Tebow as conveniently not long after his release from the Jets, the big story broke across the media and the nation putting his story on page 3 of the average four page newspaper sports section:





The world, especially the politically correct faux journalistic world of sports reporting, could care less about Christian athletes. Hell, the mainstream media attacks Christian viewpoints about everything including homosexuality even when the average Christian individual expresses tolerance for the person not the movement; if one does not believe me, ask the Boy Scouts of America. When the story about Jason Collins broke the entire news media gasped in amazement and became giddy with excitement like a Catholic school girl seeing their first penis, yet most of the average sports fans like myself yawned. It was a big “who cares” in my world because unlike the media’s desire to destroy America’s traditions and moral history, most people in our society do not judge people by their race, religion, or sexual preferences.


Of course that does not fit the militant homosexual agenda which is portion of the radical leftist movement since the 1970′s so as to create civil rights which already exist and to force those institutions which have a right as private entities to accept the “modern” version of the extremists perverted moral viewpoint. After all, this is not about the sexuality of a basketball player, it is more about destroying American tradition so as to weaken society to the point of accepting a government based system of worship and morality to destroy the nation and force it to become part of a new world civilization ruled by a technocracy instead of freedom.


If anyone thinks that Christianity is not being marginalized in our nation, one simply needs to observe the blatant ignorance of the slave trade in North Africa and the Arab states by this very same media. If the individuals being bartered like cattle were members of the LGBT community it would be front page news until the realization that Islamic nations were involved forced the story back into the closet. The moral indignation that would be expressed would create nightly news stories about black slavery once again until the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia ordered their media lackeys to silence their reporters on this issue. That silence has continued for twenty years regarding Christian children regardless of race being captured in the various African conflicts then sold to Muslim masters so why should anyone expect the news to be viewed favorably about any Christian ever in our national journalistic worldview.


Tim Tebow might well have been fired because he was a Christian and having a player who attempts to be his best in the name of God offends some NFL teams and players. Christians are noted for turning the other cheek and can take quite a bit of abuse regarding their personal character, political viewpoints, and criticism of their lifestyle so he was an easy mark. As Tim’s career moves forward the lesson other athletes might learn is that to be an active and visible Christian might indeed mean going into the closet so as to avoid the scrutiny and spotlight even as other alleged minorities like homosexuals, bigamists, Satanists, and others come out of the closet in the professional sports world. Time will indeed tell how this plays out.


The reality however is that Mr. Tebow was not that good as a NFL quarterback. He is a good man, a hard worker, a true Christian in ever sense of the word, and a competitor to the very end. Our society seems to view with glee the failings of Christians in sports, politics, and business as some sort of justification that their lifestyle is now the correct moral choice and all of America must learn to either join it or endorse it. Too bad they refuse to listen to the words of Tim, his faith, and our Lord Jesus Christ; they might find out that their is room for their beliefs within Christianity also, and that they can be saved just as America was when it was founded by the believers in the True Religion of Peace, not the false one the prophets of political correctness are promoting at this time.

[Ryan Ruck]

You know Ryan, one day our snarky and snide comments will be reason enough to arrest us in this country....

[Brykovian]

Was Tim Tebow Fired Because He’s a Christian?

I think it may have had more to do with his skill-level at throwing a downfield pass. Dropping Tiebow left the Jets with only 5 (!) more traditional QBs left in camp to fight for the job. So, I think his being an outspoken Christian didn't play as big of a role here.

I DO think that his being an outspoken Christian -- and specifically, the anti-religious hatred that is targeted at him -- invites a lot of extra non-football-related drama issues for a team to deal with ... and that may definitely be a negative for teams that are considering him.

At the end of it all, the guy is a talented and results-driven athlete that is dangerous when he's running with the ball ... I see a potential H-back role for him with a struggling team at some point. I think his QB-ing days are oven, except in a Wildcat/run-option situation.

(Is this the wrong thread to talk actual football? :P)

-Bryk

[Ryan Ruck]

[vector7]

Air Force Officer Told to Remove Bible from Desk

Todd Starnes | May 03, 2013

• Comments 43

An Air Force spokesperson said personnel are not allowed to proselytize but are free to express their personal religious beliefs so long as it “does not make others uncomfortable.” But a critic pointed out an Air Force officer was told to remove a Bible that was on his desk.

“When on duty or in an official capacity, Air Force members are free to express their personal religious beliefs as long as it does not make others uncomfortable,” Lt. Col. Laurel Tingley said in a statement to Fox News. “Proselytizing (inducing someone to convert to one’s faith) goes over that line.”

Tingley said Air Force leaders “must avoid the actual or apparent use of their position to promote their personal religious beliefs to their subordinates or to extend preferential treatment for any religion.”

That statement has caused alarm among a number of religious liberty groups – including the Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty.

“What does ‘As long as it does not make others uncomfortable’ mean,” executive director Ron Crews asked Fox News.

He said last year an Air Force officer was told he could no longer keep a Bible on his desk because it “may” appear that he was condoning a particular religion.

“Air Force officers must be allowed to live out their faith in a way that is consistent with their faith,” Crews said. “If the Bible is important, then an Air Force officer should be able to have one on his desk.”

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) also took issue with the Air Force spokesperson’s use of the word ‘uncomfortable.’

“If that is the standard, then Christianity will be over because there will always be somebody who is uncomfortable no matter what someone’s belief is when it comes to Judeo-Christian beliefs,” he told Fox News. “It appears it is getting more and more difficult to be a Christian and serve in the military.”

Gohmert said it’s a different U.S. military under President Obama.

“Under President Obama’s military you are no longer allowed to share your faith,” he said – noting that the policy is putting Christians in a tough position. “Do you follow President Obama or do you follow God and the teachings of Jesus?”

“That’s pretty tough when your commander in chief puts you on the horn for that dilemma,” he added.

Fox News asked for a clarification on the Air Force policy after the Dept. of Defense backtracked on whether or not they allow religious proselytizing and whether military personnel could be at-risk for court-martialing if they share their faith.

On Monday, the Dept. of Defense released a statement noting that religious proselytization is not permitted within the department.

But earlier today, the Pentagon released a new statement noting “service members can share their faith (evangelize), but must not force unwanted, intrusive attempts to convert others of any faith or no faith to one’s beliefs (proselytization).”

While religious groups are pleased with the Dept. of Defense clarification – they are troubled by the Air Force position on religion.

Daniel Blomberg, with the Becket Fund, told Fox News he was glad to see the Dept. of Defense issue a clarification, but expressed alarm at the Air Force statement.

“The Air Force spokesman’s statement sounds like the government can ban servicemen and women from talking to one another about their faith,” he said.

“And that couldn’t be more wrong. The Air Force must follow the Department of Defense’s example to immediately correct its statement to avoid chilling Airmen and women’s religious liberty.”

Blomberg said the Air Force policy is “unconstitutional and wrong.”

“Our brave fighting men and women should not be reduced to whispering fearfully about their faith by their own government,” he said.

Crews said mandating an Air Force officer not extend preferential treatment from one religion is absurd.

“If an Air Force officer is a Muslim, I would expect that officer to say prayers, attend services and not go to a Catholic mass,” he said. “That is extending preferential treatment, and rightly so.”

[Phil Fiord]

It would appear even Buddhists agree on this point.

[Phil Fiord]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22356306

FWIW. A somewhat pussified BBC article follows.


Why are Buddhist monks attacking Muslims?

By Alan Strathern Oxford University
Continue reading the main story In today's Magazine

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Of all the moral precepts instilled in Buddhist monks the promise not to kill comes first, and the principle of non-violence is arguably more central to Buddhism than any other major religion. So why have monks been using hate speech against Muslims and joining mobs that have left dozens dead?
This is happening in two countries separated by well over 1,000 miles of Indian Ocean - Burma and Sri Lanka. It is puzzling because neither country is facing an Islamist militant threat. Muslims in both places are a generally peaceable and small minority.
In Sri Lanka, the issue of halal slaughter has been a flashpoint. Led by monks, members of the Bodu Bala Sena - the Buddhist Brigade - hold rallies, call for direct action and the boycotting of Muslim businesses, and rail against the size of Muslim families.
While no Muslims have been killed in Sri Lanka, the Burmese situation is far more serious. Here the antagonism is spearheaded by the 969 group, led by a monk, Ashin Wirathu, who was jailed in 2003 for inciting religious hatred. Released in 2012, he has referred to himself bizarrely as "the Burmese Bin Laden".
Continue reading the main story Buddhism and non-violence


Buddhist teachings were handed down orally and not written until centuries after the Buddha's lifetime. The principle of non-violence is intrinsic to the doctrine, as stressed in the Dhammapada, a collection of sayings attributed to the Buddha.
Its first verse teaches that a person is made up of the sum of his thoughts: "If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him, as the wheel follows the foot of the ox that draws the carriage."
The most basic principles of Buddhist morality are expressed in five precepts, which monks are obliged - and laymen encouraged - to follow. The first is to abstain from killing living creatures.
One objective of Buddhist meditation is to produce a state of "loving kindness" for all beings.
Verse five of the Dhammapada tells us that: "Hatred does not cease by hatred at any time: hatred ceases by love, this is an eternal rule."

• BBC Religion - Buddhism

March saw an outbreak of mob violence directed against Muslims in the town of Meiktila, in central Burma, which left at least 40 dead.
Tellingly, the violence began in a gold shop. The movements in both countries exploit a sense of economic grievance - a religious minority is used as the scapegoat for the frustrated aspirations of the majority.
On Tuesday, Buddhist mobs attacked mosques and burned more than 70 homes in Oakkan, north of Rangoon, after a Muslim girl on a bicycle collided with a monk. One person died and nine were injured.
But aren't Buddhist monks meant to be the good guys of religion?
Aggressive thoughts are inimical to all Buddhist teachings. Buddhism even comes equipped with a practical way to eliminate them. Through meditation the distinction between your feelings and those of others should begin to dissolve, while your compassion for all living things grows.
Of course, there is a strong strain of pacifism in Christian teachings too: "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you," were the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount.
But however any religion starts out, sooner or later it enters into a Faustian pact with state power. Buddhist monks looked to kings, the ultimate wielders of violence, for the support, patronage and order that only they could provide. Kings looked to monks to provide the popular legitimacy that only such a high moral vision can confer.
The result can seem ironic. If you have a strong sense of the overriding moral superiority of your worldview, then the need to protect and advance it can seem the most important duty of all.
Christian crusaders, Islamist militants, or the leaders of "freedom-loving nations", all justify what they see as necessary violence in the name of a higher good. Buddhist rulers and monks have been no exception.

So, historically, Buddhism has been no more a religion of peace than Christianity.
One of the most famous kings in Sri Lankan history is Dutugamanu, whose unification of the island in the 2nd Century BC is related in an important chronicle, the Mahavamsa.
It says that he placed a Buddhist relic in his spear and took 500 monks with him along to war against a non-Buddhist king.
Continue reading the main story More on monks and violence

• The BBC's Charles Haviland on how hardline Buddhists target Sri Lanka's Muslim minority
• The origins of Burma's religious and communal tensions explained in a Q&A
• "Burmese bin Laden", Wirathu, tells the Guardian he's just protecting his people
• US magazine The Nation on the historical and political background to Buddhist violence

He destroyed his opponents. After the bloodshed, some enlightened ones consoled him: "The slain were like animals; you will make the Buddha's faith shine."
Burmese rulers, known as "kings of righteousness", justified wars in the name of what they called true Buddhist doctrine.
In Japan, many samurai were devotees of Zen Buddhism and various arguments sustained them - killing a man about to commit a dreadful crime was an act of compassion, for example. Such reasoning surfaced again when Japan mobilised for World War II.
Buddhism took a leading role in the nationalist movements that emerged as Burma and Sri Lanka sought to throw off the yoke of the British Empire. Occasionally this spilled out into violence. In 1930s Rangoon, amid resorts to direct action, monks knifed four Europeans.
More importantly, many came to feel Buddhism was integral to their national identity - and the position of minorities in these newly independent nations was an uncomfortable one.
In 1983, Sri Lanka's ethnic tensions broke out into civil war. Following anti-Tamil pogroms, separatist Tamil groups in the north and east of the island sought to break away from the Sinhalese majority government.
Violence has left many Burmese Muslims homeless
During the war, the worst violence against Sri Lankan Muslims came at the hands of the Tamil rebels. But after the fighting came to a bloody end with the defeat of the rebels in 2009, it seems that majority communal passions have found a new target in the Muslim minority.
In Burma, monks wielded their moral authority to challenge the military junta and argue for democracy in the Saffron Revolution of 2007. Peaceful protest was the main weapon of choice this time, and monks paid with their lives.
Now some monks are using their moral authority to serve a quite different end. They may be a minority, but the 500,000-strong monkhood, which includes many deposited in monasteries as children to escape poverty or as orphans, certainly has its fair share of angry young men.
The exact nature of the relationship between the Buddhist extremists and the ruling parties in both countries is unclear.
Sri Lanka's powerful Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa was guest of honour at the opening of a Buddhist Brigade training school, and referred to the monks as those who "protect our country, religion and race".
But the anti-Muslim message seems to have struck a chord with parts of the population.
Even though they form a majority in both countries, many Buddhists share a sense that their nations must be unified and that their religion is under threat.
The global climate is crucial. People believe radical Islam to be at the centre of the many of the most violent conflicts around the world. They feel they are at the receiving end of conversion drives by the much more evangelical monotheistic faiths. And they feel that if other religions are going to get tough, they had better follow suit.
Alan Strathern is a fellow in History at Brasenose College, Oxford and author of Kingship and Conversion in Sixteenth-Century Sri Lanka: Portuguese Imperialism in a Buddhist Land